IBM Instana Observability Self-Hosted

What do you like best about the product?

I really like the agent deployment because it discovers services instantly without requiring us to do a lot of configuration. I also appreciate the alerting system; it has been a game changer for improving our incident response times. On top of that, the dynamic service maps help us derive actionable insights, which are essential for our application performance monitoring.

What do you dislike about the product?

It can take a significant amount of time and effort to train new users on its advanced functionality and full set of features. In my opinion, it’s also noticeably pricier than other APM tools I’ve worked with.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

My experience with IBM Instana in our organization has been largely positive. Before deploying it, we struggled to identify performance issues quickly. Since implementing it, it has helped us resolve incidents faster and has also given us real-time monitoring capabilities, which makes it easier to spot and address problems as they arise.

What do you like best about the product?

I use IBM Instana for application performance monitoring, which efficiently shows our application's performance in real time and quickly identifies problems. I like that it's built for real-time monitoring and reduces manual work. I appreciate the live service map, which updates in real time and fits well with our DevOps and SRE workflows.

What do you dislike about the product?

Costs can become high at scale and the UI can feel overwhelming at first. Specifically, the service view and topology map can be challenging due to too much information being shown at once.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use IBM Instana for real-time application performance monitoring, which helps in quickly finding and resolving performance issues, outages, and errors efficiently. It also reduces manual work and fits well with DevOps/SRE workflows with features like the live service map.

What do you like best about the product?

I use IBM Instana for real-time application monitoring, and it helps me quickly detect issues and easily identify root causes across services. It makes troubleshooting faster with the clear traces and smart alerts. IBM Instana works especially well with microservices and Kubernetes environments, and I appreciate the easy setup and clean dashboard. It integrates well with CI/CD pipelines. Most services were auto-detected with minimal manual configuration, which made the initial setup quick and straightforward for our team. I switched to IBM Instana from a traditional monitoring tool, and it provides better real-time visibility and faster root cause analysis.

What do you dislike about the product?

Alerts can sometimes be too sensitive and generate noise. Improving alerts tuning and noise reduction would be helpful. More flexible dashboard customization and simpler pricing would improve the overall experience.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use IBM Instana for real-time application monitoring and observability, quickly detecting issues and identifying root causes across services. It reduces service failures and troubleshooting time with clear traces and smart alerts, especially in microservices and Kubernetes environments.

What do you like best about the product?

I like the way it monitoring real time and automatic tracing features.
It help me to quickly identify the root cause of any problem without manual checking multiple logs in microservices and api.
Service dependency map and error detection save a lot of debugging time.

What do you dislike about the product?

Ui feel complex for new user.
Some filter are not very easy to grap like, i were confuse initially which option i have to click to see logs, metrics.
But overall better experience

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Previously i use a lot of time , debugging etc to find error in production, it make easy to identify slow api and failure with the help of real-time monitoring, automatic service mapping

What do you like best about the product?

I use IBM Instana as our primary application performance monitoring tool across our microservices architecture, and I love how it offers real-time observability without manual instrumentation. Instana makes troubleshooting a lot easier with its end-to-end visibility, which means we’re no longer guessing which service or component is causing issues. I appreciate the friction Instana removes from our day-to-day monitoring and incident response. The UI is clean and intuitive, making navigation seamless even under pressure. The strong correlation across signals, low operational overhead, and helpful service and endpoint views are standout features for me. Instana fits perfectly within fast-moving, CI/CD-driven environments, automatically adapting as services scale and change. It's dependable, quick at providing answers during incidents, and the first place we go when something goes wrong.

What do you dislike about the product?

Even though IBM Instana works really well overall, there are a few areas where I think it could improve. The biggest downside is cost. As your environment grows—more services, more hosts, more traces—the pricing can add up quickly. It’s something you really have to keep an eye on, especially in large or rapidly scaling Kubernetes setups. While the built-in views are good, custom dashboarding feels a bit limited compared to tools like Grafana. If you want highly tailored visualizations for specific teams or use cases, it can feel restrictive. Instana is powerful, but that also means it can be overwhelming at first. New team members sometimes struggle to understand all the views, concepts, and how to effectively navigate traces and dependencies. Instana does a great job with metrics and traces, but if your troubleshooting process is very log-centric, you may still need to rely heavily on another tool. The logs-to-traces experience could be smoother. In very dynamic systems, the automatic discovery and alerting can sometimes surface more information than you need. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it takes some tuning to keep things focused and relevant.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use IBM Instana for real-time observability into our systems' health without manual instrumentation. It solves visibility issues, speeds up root cause analysis, reduces alert noise, and adapts well to fast-moving environments, allowing us to proactively manage and quickly resolve production issues.